How Has The Nominating Process Changed Over Time

Is English irresolute?

Edited by Betty Birner

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Aye, and then is every other human linguistic communication!Language is always changing, evolving, and adapting to the needs of its users. This isn't a bad thing; if English language hadn't changed since, say, 1950, nosotros wouldn't have words to refer to modems, fax machines, or cablevision TV. As long as the needs of linguistic communication users continue to change, and then will the language. The change is so deadening that from year to year we hardly discover it, except to grumble every so often about the 'poor English language' being used by the younger generation! However, reading Shakespeare'due south writings from the sixteenth century tin be difficult. If you go back a couple more centuries, Chaucer'sCanterbury Tales are very tough sledding, and if you lot went back another 500 years to try to readBeowulf, it would be like reading a different language.

Why does language change?

Language changes for several reasons. First, information technology changes considering the needs of its speakers change. New technologies, new products, and new experiences require new words to refer to them clearly and efficiently. Consider texting: originally it was called text messaging, considering information technology allowed one person to transport another text rather than voice letters by telephone. As that became more than common, people began using the shorter coursetext to refer to both the messageand the process, as inI just got a text orI'll text Sylviaright at present.

Another reason for change is that no 2 people take had exactly the aforementioned language experience. We all know a slightly different set of words and constructions, depending on our age, job, educational activity level, region of the country, and then on. We selection up new words and phrases from all the different people we talk with, and these combine to make something new and unlike any other person's particular way of speaking. At the same fourth dimension, various groups in society use language as a way of marking their grouping identity; showing who is and isn't a member of the grouping.

Many of the changes that occur in language begin with teens and young adults. As young people interact with others their own age, their linguistic communication grows to include words, phrases, and constructions that are dissimilar from those of the older generation. Some have a curt life bridge (heardgroovy lately?), but others stick around to affect the language as a whole.

We get new words from many dissimilar places. We borrow them from other languages (sushi, chutzpah), we create them by shortening longer words (gym fromgymnasium) or by combining words (brunch frombreakfast anddejeuner), and we brand them out of proper names (Levis,fahrenheit). Sometimes we fifty-fifty create a new word past existence wrong about the analysis of an existing word, like how the give-and-takepea was created. Four hundred years ago, the wordpease was used to refer to either a single pea or a bunch of them, only over fourth dimension, people assumedExcerpt from Beowulf

thatpease was a plural form, for whichpea must be the singular. Therefore, a new word,pea, was born. The same thing would happen if people began to think of the wordcheese equally referring to more than than onechee.

Word lodge as well changes, though this procedure is much slower. Former English language word society was much more 'free' than that of Modern English, and even comparing the Early on Modern English of the Male monarch James Bible with today's English shows differences in discussion gild. For example, the Male monarch James Bible translates Matthew 6:28 as "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not." In a more contempo translation, the concluding phrase is translated as "they do not toil," because English language no longer placesnot after the verb in a sentence.

The sounds of a language change over time, too. About 500 years ago, English language began to undergo a major change in the way its vowels were pronounced. Before that,geese would have rhymed with today'southward pronunciation offace, whilemice would take rhymed with today'speace. However, a 'Neat Vowel Shift' began to occur, during which theay audio (as inpay) inverse toee (as infee) in all the words containing it, while theee sound changed toi (as inpie). Overall, vii unlike vowel sounds were affected. If you've e'er wondered why most other European languages spell the audioay with an 'east' (as infiancé), and the soundee with an 'i' (every bit inaria), it'southward because those languages didn't undergo the Great Vowel Shift, only English did.

Wasn't English language more than elegant in Shakespeare'south day?

People tend to remember that older forms of languages are more elegant, logical, or 'correct' than modern forms, but it's just not truthful.The fact that language is always irresolute doesn't mean it'southward getting worse; it's but becoming dissimilar.

In Erstwhile English, a minor winged beast with feathers was known as a brid. Over time, the pronunciation changed tobird. Although information technology'due south not hard to imagine children in the 1400's existence scolded for 'slurring'brid intobird, it'due south clear thatbird won out. Nobody today would suggest thatbird is an incorrect discussion or a sloppy pronunciation.

The speech patterns of young people tend to grate on the ears of adults because they're unfamiliar. Also, new words and phrases are used in spoken or informal language sooner than in formal, written linguistic communication, and then it's truthful that the phrases yous may hear a teenager use may not nevertheless be appropriate for business organization messages. But that doesn't mean they're worse - just newer. For years, English teachers and newspaper editors argued that the give-and-takehopefully shouldn't be used to mean 'I hope', every bit inhopefully it won't rain today, even though people oft used information technology that manner in breezy spoken language. (Of course nobody complained nigh other 'judgement adverbs' such asbluntly andactually.) The battle againsthopefully is now all but lost, and information technology appears at the beginnings of sentences, fifty-fifty in formal documents.

If yous listen carefully, you can hearlanguage change in progress. For example,anymore is a word that used to simply occur in negative sentences, such asI don't eat pizza anymore. Now, in many areas of the country, it's being used in positive sentences, similarI've been eating a lot of pizza anymore. In this use,anymore means something similar 'lately'. If that sounds odd to you lot at present, keep listening; y'all may exist hearing it in your neighborhood before long.

Why tin can't people just use correct English?

By 'right English language', people usually mean Standard English language. Virtually languages have a standard form; information technology's the form of the language used in government, education, and other formal contexts. But Standard English is actually simply anedialect of English.

What'due south important to realize is that there's no such thing as a 'sloppy' or 'lazy' dialect.Every dialect of every language has rules - not 'schoolroom' rules, like 'don't split your infinitives', only rather the sorts of rules that tell us thatthe cat slept is a sentence of English, merelyslept cat the isn't. These rules tell us what languageis like rather than what itshould be like.

Different dialects take dissimilar rules. For example:

(l) I didn't consume any dinner.

(2) I didn't swallow no dinner.

Sentence (l) follows the rules of Standard English; sentence (2) follows a set of rules present in several other dialects. Neither is sloppier than the other, they just differ in the rule for making a negative sentence. In (fifty),dinner is marked as negative withany; in (2), it's marked as negative withno. The rules are unlike, but neither is more logical or elegant than the other. In fact, Erstwhile English regularly used 'double negatives', parallel to what nosotros run into in (2). Many modern languages, including Italian and Spanish, either allow or require more than one negative word in a sentence. Sentences like (2) only sound 'bad' if you didn't happen to grow up speaking a dialect that uses them.

You may have been taught to avert 'split up infinitives', as in (3):

(iii) I was asked to thoroughly water the garden.

This is said to be 'ungrammatical' becausethoroughly splits the infinitiveto h2o. Why are split up infinitives and so bad? Here's why: seventeenth-century grammarians believed Latin was the ideal language, so they thought English language should exist as much like Latin as possible. In Latin, an infinitive liketo water is a unmarried word; it's incommunicable to carve up information technology upwards. So today, 300 years later, we're yet existence taught that sentences like (3) are wrong, all because someone in the 1600's thought English should be more than like Latin.

Hither's one last example. Over the past few decades, three new ways of reporting speech have appeared:

(4) So Karen goes, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!"

(5) And so Karen is like, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!"

(vi) And so Karen is all, "Wow - I wish I'd been there!"

In (4),goes ways pretty much the same affair equallysaid; information technology'southward used for reporting Karen'southward actual words. In (5),is like means the speaker is telling us more or less what Karen said. If Karen had used unlike words for the same basic idea, (five) would be appropriate, but (four) would not. Finally,is all in (6) is a fairly new construction. In well-nigh of the areas where it's used, it ways something similar tois similar, but with actress emotion. If Karen had simply been reporting the time, it would be okay to sayShe'southward like, "Information technology'due south five o'clock," but odd to sayShe's all, "It's v o'clock"unless there was something heady about it existence five o'clock.

Is it a lazy way of talking? Not at all; the younger generation has made a useful three-fashion distinction where we previously only had the wordsaid.Language volition never stop irresolute; it will proceed to respond to the needs of the people who use information technology. So the next time you hear a new phrase that grates on your ears, recall that like everything else in nature, the English language linguistic communication is a piece of work in progress.

For farther information

Aitcheson, lean. 1991.Language Modify: Progress or Decay? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bryson, Bill. 1991.Mother Natural language: The English Language. New York: Penguin Books.

Source: https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/english-changing

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